By Ladi Dapson, Maiduguri
 
The Borno State Commissioner of Police, Yusufu Lawal, has described the alarming rate of sexual gender-based violence (SGBV) witnesses in Borno as a result of 14 years of devastation from Boko Haram insurgency conflicts in the state.
 
Lawan expressed raised concerns while speaking with newsmen during a one-week capacity-building for 92 gender desk officers across the command organised by the Borno State Police Command in partnership with the UK International Stability Fund and the Lake Chad Basin Support Framework, held in Maiduguri.
 
According to him, the training aimed at strengthening the capacity of personnel to investigate cases of SGBV through a more coordinated and responsive approach because gender-based violence is not isolation from other crimes but a spillover effect to suicides, drug abuse, broken homes, and others. 
 
“It is a little wonder that from the National Database. We have seen statistics of gender related violence on the rise in this part of the country. So it is, of course, necessary that we need the required intervention and training to be able to handle the emerging cases of SGBV.

“The Bono state is transiting from over a decade of insurgency. And the peace has now returned. One of the fallouts of years of insurgency is that the societal fabric has been dislocated, and in any conflict, the vulnerable are the first to suffer: women, children, and the aged are the first victims in these years of insurgency.
 
“The training is not just theoretical but practical to give them the facilities to be very effective in investigating sexual and gender-based violence-related cases.”CP Yusuf said.
 
CP Yusuf also charged the trainees to go back to their divisions and cascade the knowledge and skills they have acquired from the training to other personnel in their various divisions.
 
The training, themed “Nigerian Police Force Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Investigators Course for Implementation of Gender Desk.